There is universal agreement that Christianity was used to justify the institution of slavery. There is the so-called curse of Ham story (Genesis 9:20-27) regarding being cursed with dark skin and there is the Apostle Paul’s claim that servants should be obedient to their masters (Ephesians 6:5). On the other side, there is the very poignant truth that the leading abolitionists were also Christians. Today, ne’er a contemporary Christian is proud of the use to which these passages were put.
One of the striking things about Islam is that there is so much debate over whether (1) the Qur’an permitted or justified the practice of slavery or not. But whether the Qur’an did or not, all that really matters at a practical level is that (2) self-avowed Muslims practiced slavery and claimed that it was justified in some way or the other.
After all, the wrong of slavery at the hands of Christians does not get wiped away if it is true, as no doubt can be argued, that the biblical passages to which I referred in the first paragraph cannot be rightly taken as a justification of slavery. If self-avowed Christians, justified slavery by appealing to those passages or some other passages or some other forms of reasoning, the bottom-line will still be that slavery is wrong and Christians justified the wrongful practice of slavery.
Whether the Qur’an can, as a matter of fact, be shown to have justified slavery: If Muslims practiced slavery, then the bottom-line will still be that slavery is wrong and Muslims justified the wrongful practice of slavery.
But at this point, there is a fundament difference between Christianity and Islam that seems to be roundly ignored. Islam has the hadith and the fatwa. These are authoritative rulings that have various degrees of binding force. For instance, the Qur’an does not require that women wear the hajib (that is, the veil). Rather, this requirement is based upon various authoritative pronouncements. So strictly speaking, the Qur’an could be absolutely silent about slavery and yet the practice of Islam itself could nonetheless justify it.
Islam = the Qur’an and the authoritative rulings
Judaism is similar in this regard. By contrast, Christianity of the Protestant form is not. The authority is the bible. End of story. Catholicism, on the other hand, is more like Judaism and Islam. For there are the sayings of the Pope ex cathedra that are binding.
Getting back to Islam and slavery, as opposed to whether there is a passage in the Qur’an condoning slavery, one of the most striking assertions that I have come across is that the humanitarian character of Islam is simply incompatible with slavery. Islam means “submission” and at the Islamic site Welcome to Submission, for instance, we are told that told that God has conferred honor and dignity upon all human beings regardless of their race. Thus, so we are told, Islam put up with the various instances of slavery that it encountered but only with aim of ending the slavery gradually and so without upheaval. The move here is concede the enslavement of blacks, but then to insist that it really wasn’t so horrific after all. Notice that the line of thought reeks with the stench of despicable paternalism. The black beneficiaries of Islamic paternalism must have been absolutely delighted. (See John Ralph Willis, “Islamic Africa: Reflections on the Servile Estate,” Studia Islamica 52 (1980): 183-197, who points out that the curse of Ham served as a motif among Muslims (p. 197) for regarding blacks as inferior.)
How can one miss the palpable irony here? It is nothing at all for a sheik to declare, ever so indiscriminately, a holy war (a jihad) upon this or that group of people. For example, the argument for suicide-bombings against Israelis owes its force to the idea of a holy war. In the name of a holy war, Islam practitioners think nothing of harming people even when the presumption of innocence is ever so plausible, as with blowing up a bus full of school children.
The God of Islam, namely Allah, may very well have conferred honor and dignity upon the entire human race. But there is no evidence whatsoever that this truth constrains Muslims from committing acts of horrendous violence against others. It suffices that these others are declared enemies of Islam. And if children on a school bus can be viewed as the enemies of Islam, then I am afraid that anyone can. So all we would need to get to the permissibility of slavery is that this or that group of individuals is declared an enemy of Islam.
If a Martian were to visit earth and to familiarize himself with Christianity and Islam as they are presently practiced by large communities of Christians and Muslims, he could not by extrapolating from what he is now witnessing that Islam is incompatible with its adherents treating others in the despicable way that is characteristic of slavery. Certainly, the Martian would have no reason to think that the very nature of Islam would have precluded slavery centuries of ago. By contrast, it would be easy enough for him to think that of Christianity, given the present behavior of Christians throughout the world.
While there is lots of evil behavior out there, the simple truth of the matter is that there are few Christians running around who, in the name of Christianity itself, are killing others or targeting others to be killed. By contrast, the number of Muslims doing this in the name of Islam is comparatively high.
For all I know, the actual text of the Qur’an is none other than a text of peace throughout. But there is simply no reason on the face of this earth to think that a like claim holds for the practitioners of Islam themselves. For we know that so-called authoritative declarations by sheiks that a people is the enemy of Islam are made all the time. There is one against the United States made by the World Islamic Front; and Sheik Omar Bakri Muhammad calls upon British Muslims to perform jihad. A jihad shows a reckless disregard for the innocent, including children. So no matter no matter how many claims we find in the Qur’an regarding the humanity of all people regardless of race, we know that the practitioners of Islam are more than able to run roughshod over the innocent.
So if a person is going to defend Islam against the charge that the practice of slavery was justified or at least permitted in its name, because Islam recognizes the worth of all human beings regardless of race, such an individual has no chance of getting there by the assertion that in practice Islam respects the idea that Allah endowed all human beings with dignity and honor. Why? Because any system that can have a reckless disregard for the innocent is more than capable of slavery. All we need for a jihad is that Islam is threatened; and as we know, the sense of being threatened is a very, very subjective notion. I can feel threatned because they followed me; I can feel threatened merely because they looked at me. Worse, I can feel threatened although my feelings are hardly warranted. For some Muslims, the mere existence of Jews is a threat to Islam. All that it would take to declare a jihad against blacks is the “sense” they are a threat to the wholesomeness of Islamic life. And in this regard, Muslims could help themselves to some of the very same imagery that were used by others to claim that the enslavement of blacks is justified. For instance, the inferiority of blacks (tied to the curse of Ham motif mentioned above) is a threat because it sullies Islamic wholesomeness. Voilà: a threat. Did I mention how similar that threat sounds to the one used by Christians in their justification of slavery centuries ago?
For the record, the issue is not whether all Muslims are evil. It is no more true that all Muslims are evil than it is that all Christians or all whites or all blacks are evil. I do not think for a moment that all Muslims are evil. That is a silly view.
What have I done? I have not cited a shred of evidence that shows that slavery was practiced by Islam centuries ago. Yet, I have done something extremely important. For I have argued that, if present behavior is any indication, then there is no reason at all to think that, with respect to engaging in the practice of slavery, the practitioners of Islam were any different than the practitioners of Christianity. This is true even if allow that there were important difference with respect to Islamic slavery and slavery as it was practiced by others. For the very idea of an acceptable form of slavery is an oxymoron.
As I have indicated, there is considerable evidence that the expression “enemy of Islam” is a term of art. It is a declaration that is made for all sorts of reasons. Why a person need only publish the wrong kind of cartoon, as the case of the Denmark journalist makes quite evident. But this much is clear: once a group of individuals have been so construed, then their entitlement to humanitarian treatment, by fellow Muslims, diminishes ever so precipitously. So the fact that Allah takes all human beings to have dignity is no impediment at all to the practitioners of Islam holding slaves. If one can license killing a people, then one can certainly license enslaving a people.
Muslims have shown themselves no less immune to greed and bitterness and blind-rage than Christians and Jews. Muslims have shown themselves no less susceptible to the abuse of power than Christians and Jews. Islam may very well understand itself to have succeeded Christianity and so Judaism as well. Is there any reason whatsoever, though, to believe that by-and-large the practitioners of Islam have, in virtue of being such, considerably greater immunity to incredulous acts of wrongdoing? I think not.
There is overwhelming evidence that Islamic slavery thrived. And we would have to be fools to think otherwise. The Ottoman Empire was not exactly an oasis of equality in the parched dessert of systemmatic inequality in the form slavery.
Muslims are susceptible to the same temptations and forms of corruption to which Jews and Christians are susceptible. It is hubris of the worse sort to suggest otherwise. It is nothing but a most repugnant form of blinding arrogance to claim that the character of Islam is such that its practitioners unlike everyone else all around them were righteous in their behavior with respect to slavery, because an immutable respect for all humanity is an ineliminable part of Islam. This is either a bold face lie or the practitioners of Islam ain’t what they used to be.
